Paul Noll Cooks for Korean Workers

	Paul Noll Cooks for Korean Workers Our Rations In Korea our Company operated in teams of 5 men and an officer. Our vehicles consisted of 2 weapons carriers with trailer and a jeep for the Officer. For our food someone would go to the nearest quartermaster outfit to secure rations. This was always an interesting exercise. Getting Rations You reported to the office and stated your unit. In my case "Team E07 of the 581st Radio Relay Company." The man ahead of me was getting rations for a regiment, some 1500 men. He had a semi-truck. They look up the unit in a book marked "Top Secret" which has all units in Korea and their manpower. Then they refer to the menu for the day. If potatoes were on the menu the clerk would fill out a form multiplying the ration for one man by 1500 which might come out to 750 pounds of potatoes. The potatoes came in 100 pound sacks and he could get 7 or 8 sacks for the 1500 men. Team E07 For my team the number was 6, so we were authorized to get 3 pounds of potatoes. The clerk, a Sergeant, said to me, "it comes in 100 pound sacks, we don't break up the sack take it all or none." Next was chocolate bars, "you get 6, it comes in boxes of 48, take it all or none." Next was cans of cream for our coffee, "you get 1, it comes in cases of 48, we don't break up cases, take all or none." And so on. All is much better than none when it comes to eating so my answer was "all" each time. Our Operations Our radio team has some 6-8 tons of equipment to get to the top of mountains. The Army gave us Korean money to hire workers, a million Won at a time. 1000 notes of 1000 Won. A worker got 1000 won for a day's work. We also got a ration of Korean workers, about 20 to 100 a day depending on the situation at the radio relay site. We picked them up in our trucks from the local police station where they would assemble. Food was difficult to get for the Koreans in the early part of the war.
My Team takes a Minute to eat Dinner at Inchon
Our Ration of Korean workers Somewhere I had acquired a big pot like the ones cartoonist depicted the cannibals cooking the missionaries in. It was fitted with a tripod so we could build a fire underneath. I would hold back 1 or 2 workers to help me cook. They would open all the cans of food and put them into the pot. Milk, potatoes what ever we had and build a fire under the pot. When the workers finished working we fed them. Anything left over they could take home to their families. The word got out and everyone clamored to work for us when we picked up the workers at the local police station. Good Relations with the Koreans We felt good about helping them. They would bring containers to take home food in to their families. And the food didn't go to waste. On to Next Story Back to Paul Noll's Korea Stories